World Tapering Org/ Day

ABOUT WORLD TAPERING DAY 2023

World Tapering Day is an annual event to give people tapering antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, stimulants, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers the opportunity to let their collective voice be heard. We invite people with lived experience, researchers, patients advocates and healthcare professionals from all over the world to join forces and fight for the right to taper psychotropic drugs (such as mentioned above) safely, humanely and effectively.

WTD '23 takes place on November 4, 2023.

ABOUT WORLD TAPERING ORG

WORLD
TAPERING
ORG

World Tapering Org is the organisation that does the planning for the annual event and other projects. This year, we are concentrating on a petition, supported by a social media campaign, demanding better tapering guidelines and easy acces to low dosage tapering medication.

Goals and aims

Our aim is to make tapering antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, stimulants, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers safer, more humane and more effective.
We want low dosage tapering medication to be made availably to everyone, world wide, free of charge or at VERY low cost.

We want a worldwide discussion about who is going to take financial and moral responsibility for solving the problems surrounding the use and tapering of psychotropic medication.
Current tapering guidelines are the medical equivalent of saying all the people in the world can fit into size M jeans. We want better tapering guidelines that are tailored to everyone's particular need, not a one-size fits all "solution".
We want to increase awareness of the problems surrounding psychotropic medication among the general public.

And there is more...

At present, serious harm is being caused to people tapering psychotropic drugs by withholding low dosage tapering medication.
Under current guidelines, many people are forced to taper too fast - ignoring the serious psysical and mental harm that this may cause.
Research that have been done on how to stop safely and effectively has not received proper attention, nor have they been included in the guidelines for tapering that are currently in use.
Pharmaceutical companies refuse to produce medication in lower dosages to help people taper. Instead, they concentrate on creating and marketing new psychotropic drugs.
The pharmaceutical lobby has a HUGE influence on the medical and the political establishment and and a HUGE influence on important decisionmaking worldwide.
The interests of the medical establishment are closedly intertwined with the pharmaceutical companies, because they depend on them for funding research. The pharmaceutical companies decide which results are published - and which are not.
The interests of the political establishment are also intertwined with the pharmaceutical companies, because they represent a huge economic force.
Together, the political and medical establishment and the pharmaceutical industry have created a stalemate that will prevent changes in tapering guidelines for years to come.